Anywhere There’s a Game

by Greg Van Eekhout

I got a call from Sports Illustrated yesterday. They’re doing one of those sidebar pieces where they ask guys to name their starting five, the best basketball players they ever shared a court with. “You don’t want that,” I told the kid on the phone. “I was in the NBA for seventeen years. I could tell you about guys like Lon McGee, who wore one pair of sneakers his entire career, held together with tape and glue and sheer will-power. Or Pig-Iron Von Ziegler, who smelled like machine oil and whose joints screeched like a stepped-on cat by the end of his career. The best? Who cares about the best? Why settle for the best when I can give you the most remarkable?”

The kid thanked me politely, but he told me that wasn’t what he needed for his piece. He’d talk to his editor, though, and mention my idea to him. He’d get back to me.

Well, I’m not going to live forever, and I can’t wait for his editor. I’ve got tales to tell, and I’ve got to tell them while I’m still kicking. So here it is, my starting five. Not the most talented guys I’ve ever played with, but instead, the dirt workers and edge cases and oddballs and sideshow escapees. These are the guys that I’ll never forget. These are the characters.

It Takes a Town

by Stephen V. Ramey

“They ain’t really going through with this,” Tom said. “Are they?” The pig smell intensified, driving off more pleasant fumes of paint and honest sweat. “First the casino. Then the amusement park. Now a rocket?” He chuckled. “Won’t you crazy townies never learn?”

“This is different. This will really put Thornhope on the map.” Anthony turned back to his work. “The whole town is pitching in.” He finished outlining the final T and selected a sash brush from his tool belt. The brush’s upper portion was crusted but the tips were flexible enough. He dipped it into black paint.

“What about materials?”

“Folks are donating–”

“And what about the rocket? Where you gonna get that?”

Anthony licked his lips, trying not to lose concentration. “There’s talk about that old silo on your property–”

“My silo!” Tom laughed hard and slapped his thigh. “What in hellfire makes you think a bunch of morons and a queerball crossdresser can launch a silo to Mars?”

Anthony rolled his eyes. This was exactly the attitude he hoped to escape. “Who’s to say we can’t?”

Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Change of Life

by K.D. Wentworth

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” I called after him. “This pass is dangerous. You never know when you’re going to run into a bunch of low-down, dirty, skulking ban–”

“And just who are you calling `dirty’ there, ducks?” a familiar male voice called down from the rocks above. “Actually, I’m thinking the two of you could do with a bit of spit and polish your own selves.”

“Lomo, you skunk!” Corpsemaker’s hooves clattered as I pulled her up.

“That’s Lomo, King of the Bandits, to you,” he said haughtily.

I leaped out of the saddle, my sword Esmeralda in hand. “I thought I split your thieving head open the last time you waylaid us!”

“That,” he said loftily from his unseen perch, “was merely a clever ruse on my part.”

“Rats and eels, I hate it when they won’t stay dead!”